4 Recent Movies That Are Secretly Totally Nuts

4 Death On The Nile Gives Us A Lengthy Origin Story For Poirot’s Mustache

Kenneth Branagh’s latest (and most cursed) Hercule Poirot movie, Death on the Nile, has been taking a lot of crap lately, mostly because the film’s CGI budget was presumably spent on magic beans, resulting in its whole “Speed Racer fan film test footage” aesthetic.

But the movie itself is one of the most truly unhinged literary adaptations of all-time. For one thing, Branagh provides us with a detailed traumatic backstory for Poirot … ‘s mustache. Yeah, the film opens, not in Egypt, but in the trenches of World War 1, where Poirot witnesses the death of his commanding officer who has a big, crazy mustache.

So Poirot grew his facial hair purely in tribute to his fallen friend? Not so fast – just moments later, an injured Poirot wakes up in a military hospital with a grotesque scar that, somewhat improbably, occupies a distinctly mustache-shaped area on his upper lip. We're pretty sure the exact same thing happened to Tom Selleck.

He also associates this event, and specifically the resulting mustache, to the tragedy of his one lost love; the ex-fiancee that got away – even though in the flashback, she seems both perfectly fine with the scar, and is even the one who playfully suggests that he should grow a mustache. In the end, Poirot signifies that he is ready to love again by shaving his trademark stache – which, again, his ex was seemingly totally cool with.

Agatha Christie spent more than five decades hammering out Poirot novels and never felt the need to delve into the cartoonishly tragic events that led to her detective’s signature look. That’s almost as dumb as having to explain where Han Solo got his last name. This mustache stuff is so crazy, we haven’t even had time to mention the scene in which Armie Hammer awkwardly dry-humps multiple women on the dance floor of a 1930s jazz club.

3 Jungle Cruise – The Rock Turns Out To Be An Ancient Zombie Conquistador

Movies based on Disney theme park rides don’t exactly have the best track record (weirdly began with a Brian DePalma space thriller no one remembers). Most attraction-based Disney movies have been notorious bombs like The Haunted Mansion and Tomorrowland – not to mention The Country Bears, based on the “Country Bear Jamboree” and also seemingly every nightmare you ever had as a child. Really the only ride that’s become a successful film franchise is “Pirates of the Caribbean” – so when it came time to make their Jungle Cruise movie, apparently Disney decided to just copy that adaptation as much as possible short of casting Johnny Depp in a dreadlocked wig. 

The movie has a pretty basic set-up; Emily Blunt’s Lily needs to get to a magic tree in the heart of the jungle and Frank, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is the hard-headed macho skipper who will take her there. But then around halfway through the movie, things take a dramatic left turn into crazytown. How? Well for starters, Frank dies.

But amazingly he’s still alive, resulting in a scene in which Lily has to extract a sword from his chest while still not knowing what the hell is going on.

It turns out that Frank, this random, working class boat captain, is actually an ancient immortal conquistador who turned against his fellow explorers hundreds of years ago and is now also in search of the magic tree. The only possible explanation for this random, baffling twist is that the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was also about a captain, going against his crew, who is unkillable thanks to a magic curse. Hopefully, they won’t add the “skipper randomly gets stabbed to death, but is secretly a zombie” twist to the ride. 

2 The King’s Man – The Post Credits Stinger Introduces … Hitler?

While the original film was basically just Harry Potter for adults who longed to see Colin Firth stabbing a whole bunch of people in the face, now there’s a prequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service, starring Ralph Fiennes and a whole bunch of people playing real life historical figures. Set during the beginning of World War 1, The King’s Man has all the historical accuracy of that Super Bowl commercial where Larry David hocks crypto – like we’re pretty sure Mata Hari didn’t blackmail President Woodrow Wilson into keeping the U.S. out of the war using an old-timey sex tape. 

But while most of these historical cameos were no doubt odd, the most head-scratchingiest one was saved for last. Clearly the filmmakers were attempting to tee-up an MCU-like cinematic universe, hence why we got a post-credit scene in which the mysterious villain behind many of the film’s misdeeds steps out of the shadows, and is revealed to be … Hitler?

Yeah, this movie introduced goddamn Hitler into the story while most moviegoers were busy dusting the popcorn crumbs off their crotch. And not surprisingly, not everyone was super-thrilled at the Thanos-ification of one of history’s greatest monsters. 

1 The Voyeurs Is Rear Window But With Multiple Bonkers Twists

Beating Ben Affleck’s Deep Water to the unhinged erotic thriller punch by several months, Amazon’s The Voyeurs asks the question; what if Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window was written by a horny French Canadian alien? The movie begins predictably enough; a couple move into a swank Montreal loft apartment and start peeping at the sexcapades of their neighbors across the street. Soon Pippa (played by Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney) becomes obsessed with the couple, and attempts to warn one of them about the other’s affairs. This unfortunately leads to her death, which may or may not be a murder. 

Pippa is determined to get at the truth about Julia’s death, so she … poses naked for the photographer boyfriend, Seb, and proceeds to have steamy sex with him – you know, like any good amateur detective. Unfortunately her boyfriend sees this all go down from across the street and immediately hangs himself. Later, Pippa attends Seb’s photography exhibit and, in a shocking twist, Julia is there and is totally alive! That’s because the whole thing was a set-up; the art exhibit is all about Pippa and her boyfriend’s peeping habit – the voyeurs have become the voyeurized! It features nude photos of Pippa and even a snapshot of her boyfriend’s actual corpse, all of which seems highly illegal. 

Although the artists claim that they slipped an image release form into the apartment lease which … um, also seems extremely illegal? 

Weirdly, there’s still 20 minutes left in the movie at this point, leaving time for Pippa to deduce that these guys (who faked one murder) for realsies murdered her boyfriend and made it look like a suicide. Why? It’s unclear. In any case, she drugs the couple, lures them to her optometry office and LASIKs the crap out of their eyes, permanently blinding them – presumably because it’s more thematically-relevant than, say, going to the cops. 

Perhaps this whole wacky project was just one long product placement campaign for Amazon’s line of window curtains.

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Top Image: 20th Century Studios